Best Render Settings For Blu-ray

[Dave Haynie]

BDMV is the normal “fully authored” Blu-ray disc, with menus, etc. BDAV is just a single video… this is the “consumer/home” authoring format, in theory for things like recording TV — though even in that case, you’d probably want menus and chapters added by your recorder. Both are, of course, also Blu-ray data discs… like DVD, there’s no difference in format between what you put on the disc for various purposes, just conventions of directories and file structures that player use to play a disc… or not.

The claim I’ve read on the net, but can’t verify either way, is this. Unlike DVD, in which encryption was an authoring option (CSS), it is reportedly a requirement for Blu-ray — all commercial releases in the BDMV format must be AACS protected. The story that goes with this is that there was an early grace period, in which BDMV discs would be playabout without AACS protection, but that eventually (like, by now) players would not play any unprotected BDMV. This is clearly a Bad Thing for home and small video work — certainly any of us here interested in authoring Blu-ray, and in particular, programs like DVD Architect, are based entirely on the premise that Blu-ray players support BDMV on BD-R. And again, it still works on the PS3, latest firmware and everything. But that’s the story I’ve heard tell.

You can’t burn a BDAV in DVD-Architect, but there’s really no reason: Vegas does it directly. Just get your project loaded up in Vegas and select “Tools/Burn Disc/Blu-ray Disc…”

Anyway, it seems likely that, for whatever the reason, some BD players don’t like BDMV on BD-R and/or BD-RE. It seems they never learn… all the DVD-R/+R issues with home players back in the early DVD days wasn’t bad enough?

-Dave

[Harry Welsh]

I thank you both very much for your advice. I have downloaded and installed the latest firmware for my phillips player, but it made no difference. It still wouldn’t play BDMV. I now think that possibly the disc is damaged,although I dont know how. My blu-ray player plays commercial movies with no problem and I understand they are BDMV. I can also play blu-ray burned to DVD disk no problem, and when I explore the files it says it is BDMV format. Cyberlink(Power Producer) burns both formats, I threw that in for future reference. I tried to erase my rewritable disc and it dosen’t seem to do the whole disc. One thing I must mention. When I burn HD to either Blu-Ray or DVD in PAL 25fps the movie is not smooth. Especially when it is something moving fast like a bird fluttering its wings, it almost has a ghosting effect. Same on pans. But when I burn in NTSC format it is perfect. Luckily both my Blu-ray player and TV play either format. I dont know why, but the movie clips are definately smoother. I am slowly getting into this HD after over ten years editing in standard def. I couldn’t got this far without both your advice, so again thankyou. Harry. Northern Ireland.

[John Rofrano]

I was hoping the firmware would help. I burn BDMV to BD-RE’s all the time and they playback find on my Samsung BP-1400 player.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Harry Welsh]

Hi I’m looking for some advice yet again. When I render out my home movie clips they play smoothly enough but if a bird flies past the camera it looks as if there 2 of them. I never had this problem when I used standard def. Could you tell me if my computer is the problem. It also plays the same when burned to disc. I am in a pal region. I have tried numerous settings but to no avail. Has anybody else had this problem. My computer specs are :-

Intel Core Duo CPU E4600 @ 2.04 ghz
2 Gis RAM
Graphics Intel(R) G33/G31 Express chipset family. Thanks in advance for your help.

[Dave Haynie]

Nope; nor can you burn a AVCHD disc.

On the other hand, Vegas (9,10) itself will burn a BDAV disc from the timeline (or create an .iso for later burning).

-Dave

[Bob Mark]

Any thoughts on what gives a better picture for BR MPEG2 or AVC?

I’m rendering 1920×1080 24p footage and my first try with MPEG2 using 23.975 + 2-3 pulldown looked quite good.

Bob

[Dave Haynie]

You don’t need to render 3:2 pulldown for Blu-ray. You did for DVD… DVD really only wanted to support 29.97. But Blu-ray supports native 23.976 progressive at 1920×1080.

I have used both MPEG-2 and AVC with good results. Vegas supports higher bitrates with MPEG-2 than it does with AVC, but that’s appropriate; well encoded AVC will have about twice the coding efficiency as MPEG-2 (eg, a 15Mb/s AVC stream should match a 30Mb/s MPEG-2 stream in visual quality).

What’s missing right now, though, is that the Sony AVC CODEC only supports constant bitrate encoding. Anyone who’s figured out how to produce high quality DVDs knows you get a much better result using variable bit-rate video.

The Main Concept CODEC supports both VBR and somewhat higher bit rates than Sony’s. I have used it for online video, but not Blu-ray. No obvious reason is shouldn’t work, but everyone seems to use Sony’s for Blu-ray. Ok, Sony includes the Blu-ray templates, I’m sure that’s a big part of it.

-Dave

[Bob Mark]

Thanks for that info. It seemed liked the MPEG2 rendered faster.
I noticed the 23.97 support in DVD-A so that’s great that Blu-ray supports progressive video. One of my short films will be projected in a theater and they will be using Blu-ray. Much better than DVD!!! Thanks!

Bob

[Rob Siegfried]

[Dave Haynie] “What’s missing right now, though, is that the Sony AVC CODEC only supports constant bitrate encoding.”

Dave, are you sure this is true? If AVC only supported CBR, wouldn’t it be less efficient and therefore take up more file space than MPEG-4 with VBR?

Rob Siegfried

[Dave Haynie]

You’re extrapolating, erroneously. “The Sony AVC CODEC only supports constant bitrate encoding” is a true statement. So is “AVC supports variable bitrate encoding”. Sony’s AVC is intended for Blu-ray, primarily, and so there are no salient comparisons with MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile (I assume that’s what you mean by “MPEG-4”.. AVC is just as much “MPEG-4” as ASP), Blu-ray only supports AVC, MPEG-2, and VC-1.

You can get AVC with variable bitrate encoding in Vegas using the Main Concept AVC encoder. But there are no included Blu-ray presets. Not sure why, but you really do need proper settings to ensure compliance. Could be the Main Concept encoder doesn’t do Blu-ray standard AVC? Never tried it myself. I probably should.. it also supports higher bitrates (up to 20Mb/s) than Sony’s.

-Dave